Nearly two months after a Republican presidential candidate won Pennsylvania for the first time since 1988, Democrats Gov. Tom Wolf and Sen. Bob Casey find themselves threatened in a state where their party needs to reconstruct itself after a devastating blow.
Marcel Groen, the state’s Democratic party chair, said Democrats “need to rebuild the state party from the ground up,”
The immediate challenges for Casey and Wolf are twofold. One issue is known and understood, the other is not.
The known issue is that the national party’s leftward move has cost Democrats an historic number of seats up and down the ballot in this state, Groen says.
“The unknown is how will Pennsylvania voters react to Donald Trump’s policies and presidency two years into his administration,” said Terry Madonna, political scientist at Franklin and Marshall College.
“That unknown will serve as a great mystery for a while,” said Groen, “Typically, presidents suffer down-ballot losses in their first mid-term, but Trump is anything but typical.
“But as far as the push leftward, our party, at least in this state, cannot win elections by tacking left,” he said. “The party that is more centrist wins.”
Groen said the big party losses in his state this year were historic and devastating. Not only did Hillary Clinton lose the presidential race, but Katie McGinty lost her challenge to Republican Sen. Pat Toomey.
“And the Republicans picked up historical wins in the state Senate and House, as well as continued to hold 13 out of the 18 [U.S.] House seats across the state,” he said.
“But the bright spot is we won the three statewide row officer races, including attorney general,” said Groen. “Those wins are the model we are going to build off of, to not only rebuild the party but for Casey and Wolf’s reelection.”
Casey’s challenge is his further move leftward since going to Washington in 2006, because “Pennsylvania Democrats are pretty moderate,” explained Terry Madonna, a political scientist at Franklin and Marshall College.
“But he can overcome that because he has this incredible ability to connect to voters,” Madonna said. “Look, he takes a lot of heat for not being electric, but what he has works for the voters.”
Casey, in an interview with the Washington Examiner, said he understands that he faces a different state than when he beat challenger Tom Smith in 2012. “The important lesson from 2016 is to listen to voters,” he said, “and I think even going into places where I won’t get a single vote is part of that ‘listen.’
“Voters told us we didn’t get them, they told us they didn’t want to be preached to,” he said.
He’s already visited 11 counties that Trump won, as well as Philadelphia an additional four times.
So far the only Republican who has hinted of challenging him is Rep. Pat Meehan of Delaware County, a former district attorney and U.S. attorney for Eastern Pennsylvania who just won his fourth term in the U.S. House.
Governor’s races are different creatures than federal contests, often being both policy- and personality-driven, said Madonna.
Wolf’s win in 2014 happened in a very bad year for Democrats nationally. Wolf became the only Democrat to defeat an incumbent Republican governor in that wave election year, but his win largely depended on voters rejecting incumbent Republican Tom Corbett, who had a tin ear when it came to communicating his policies.
Since 1996 Pennsylvania has become 0.4 percent more Republican in presidential election years. That was the year Bill Clinton won 28 of the state’s 67 counties; in 2012 Barack Obama was down to 13.
This year Hillary Clinton won only 11 counties. McGinty, the Democratic U.S. Senate candidate, won 7 — which should cause Casey to pay attention.
“Here is Casey’s other challenge: Midterms tend to be older and whiter,” said Madonna. “With 30 percent of the Democratic base being made up of millennials, blacks and Hispanics, Casey is going to have to work overtime to win Trump voters back to his side.”
“Part of the problem this year is that we were wedded to a national campaigns infrastructure, and their approach was much more different than I would have done,” said Groen.
“Their mistake was to not include voter persuasion. They just went out and registered a lot of voters — well, they registered a lot of Democratic voters and got them out to vote, except they then went out and voted for Trump,” he said.
“For Casey, we will get this right. We have to go out there and listen to people. That is part of the persuasion that was missing. I think Wolf understands this too.”
Wolf already has his first challenger in Scott Wagner, a charismatic and wealthy state senator who won his seat handily with a populist-driven write-in vote in 2014. His win defied and beat the state GOP establishment’s pick as well as the Democratic candidate.
It also marked the first time in Pennsylvania history that a write-in candidate won a state senate seat.
Wagner told the Examiner he is ready for the challenge: “I will make a formal announcement in January, where I will lay out my vision for the state.”
“Our structural problem in this state goes beyond 2018,” said Groen. “We have bled seats for too long. Part of that was the advantages of gerrymandering but, honestly, you have to win local state races to get control of redistricting and we didn’t do that either.
“Our biggest challenge is that we are in such a minority,” he said. “As you can see, it is going to be a herculean effort.”
